The horses struggled with the steep descent and we had to take regular breaks to rest their legs. The warrior monks scanned the trees, keeping an eye out for attackers. “Come on!” Moriyasu called excitedly. “We have two days of riding ahead of us.” His voice echoed off the trees of the forest. I turned my horse around. My little brother was right; we had much ground to cover. As we traveled, we noticed that there were people among the trees. But they were not the enemy; they were the starving. Families had retreated to the forests to scavenge and find shelter now that their villages had been robbed and razed to the ground by Uncle. I felt ashamed of the clothes on my back and my horse’s polished saddle as we rode past. Wide eyes gazed up at us from families huddled among the roots of the trees. We came across an orchard run wild where a boy was trying to scale an apricot tree to harvest some of the fruit. Anyone could see that the apricots weren’t ripe yet, but the boy was determined.
